Chapter 4
Chapter 4
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Translator: uly
Chapter: 4
Chapter Title: The Summoning Pill
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The Summoning Pill was an adorably small thing, about the size of two finger joints.
I thought I'd just pop it in and swallow it down like sticky rice cake, but unexpectedly, eating it was a real ordeal. The aroma wafting from it was pleasant, but the trouble started after I carefully put it in my mouth and chewed.
It had felt firm when I touched it with my fingers, but when my teeth bit down, it burst with a squish. The taste that lingered on my tongue for that brief moment was thick and bitter.
There was no time to savor it. The bitterness slid straight down my throat, followed by a scorching heat, then an icy chill.
My body didn't actually swell up, but it felt like it might explode from the inside with a bang. Wi Seongcheon immediately began circulating his energy. Even as his insides boiled and bubbled, his mind remained clear.
The Heavenly Harmony Chain Technique began to operate.
Before he could even notice, the cold sweat beading on his forehead evaporated. His unstable breathing settled into calm, and Wi Seongcheon's face grew serene.
The vast qi contained within the Summoning Pill melted into him, guided by the Heavenly Harmony Chain Technique.
When the energy circulation finally ended, the sun had fully set, and night had fallen.
Wi Seongcheon let out a long breath and stretched languidly. His mind was sharper than before, and his body felt much lighter. He didn't feel like sleeping.
Springing to his feet, Wi Seongcheon circled the campfire a few times. His leisurely strides suddenly quickened.
The wind whipped up by his successive steps snuffed out the campfire with a whoosh. He paid it no mind. In the pitch-black darkness, only the sharp sound of the wind filled his ears. Then, abruptly, the sound cut off.
Wi Seongcheon sat down and pondered.
'Am I strong?'
He had spent nearly all of his twenty years of life at the Heavenly Harmony Sect, on Spirit Mountain. His sparring partners had only ever been his brother, his father, and Captain Woo—those three.
At some point, he had stopped sparring much altogether. He would venture alone into Spirit Mountain, climb its peaks, gaze down from the summits, run up and down the slopes... even leap from cliffs.
That was all of it. To Wi Seongcheon, everything was training. His masters were his father, the Heavenly Harmony Sect Leader, and the natural world of Spirit Mountain that embraced the sect.
Nature could not be defeated. He had never beaten his father, either. His brother... said to be the greatest prodigy in the Heavenly Harmony Sect's history.
Though they were only three years apart, to Wi Seongcheon, his brother was a giant he could never hope to overcome in his lifetime.
He had never felt inferior to his brother. His brother was too kind for such emotions to take root.
That didn't mean he took defeat for granted, though. Losing stung, and he wanted to beat his brother someday. That desire had persisted even after his brother left. It still burned in him now.
But.
So when he asked himself if he was strong now, it was hard to answer. His father's words echoed in his mind.
The Heavenly Harmony Sect is strong.
These were words his father would never say under normal circumstances. It wasn't just to boost his departing son's spirits. His father meant it sincerely.
"It's strange."
He rekindled the fire with the dead wood. Wi Seongcheon patted his chest.
The father he knew was a man who joked around with his son and stubbornly upheld the signboard of the Heavenly Harmony Sect, which had no disciples.
As a martial artist, his father rose at dawn every day to begin with meditation, following a monotonous but steadfast routine of training like clockwork.
Beyond that.
He recalled the time ten years ago when they went to the Murim Alliance. It was a memory he didn't particularly want to dwell on.
Cold stares. Sneering lips. That was the reaction from most. At just ten years old, experiencing the world for the first time, it had been like that.
He remembered seeing the dregs of society. When he lifted his head, he didn't want to know what emotions those eyes held as they looked at him, nor did he want to feel it.
So he had gripped his father's hand tightly. Back then, he couldn't understand why his father endured such humiliation to come to the Murim Alliance.
All he wanted was to go home.
After keeping his head down for a long while, he suddenly looked up. His father stood ramrod straight, unflinching before the scornful gazes.
'Brazen?'
That wasn't all of it.
The letter of recommendation that allowed entry to the Celestial Academy. It wasn't something money alone could buy, but no matter how he thought about it, the Heavenly Harmony Sect lacked such wealth.
'It doesn't make sense.'
What on earth did the Celestial Academy see in the Heavenly Harmony Sect to grant an admission recommendation? Wi Seongcheon was a nobody in the murim world.
People might know the Heavenly Harmony Sect Leader, but they had no interest in his son.
Yet his father had obtained the recommendation. Through what connections?
The Celestial Academy wasn't a place for just anyone. You needed good backing, wealth, or exceptional talent.
The Heavenly Harmony Sect belonged to none of those categories.
Backing? There were plenty of sects better off. The Wi Clan? Barely worthy of being called one. Wealth? No way. Talent, then? It had to be demonstrated first, and who would know of Wi Seongcheon's skills, raised solely in the Heavenly Harmony Sect and on Spirit Mountain, enough to write a recommendation?
The Summoning Pill, too.
How had his father come to possess such a precious spirit pill, treasured even by Shaolin?
Received it? From whom? Did some compassionate Shaolin monk take pity and give it as charity?
He had asked about the recommendation last night. His father had brushed it off, saying he'd gotten it somehow. No matter how much he pressed, that was all he got, so Wi Seongcheon gave up on hearing more.
He even wondered if it was fake. Maybe the Celestial Academy was just an excuse, and his father really wanted him to leave the sect and see the world.
That seemed plausible. The letter was too detailed for a mere lie.
It was the kind of thing his father would do. Believing the forged recommendation blindly, going to the Celestial Academy, only for his last remaining son to be humiliated...
'I don't have to endure the shame.'
"Ah, seriously."
Wi Seongcheon sighed deeply and flopped onto his back. Thinking back to when he left the Heavenly Harmony Sect made his head spin.
His father then hadn't seemed the type for such pranks. The Summoning Pill... was real. So the recommendation?
'No point thinking here. I can't tell if it's fake or real just by looking.'
In the end, he had no choice but to go. Lying on his back, Wi Seongcheon gazed up at the starry sky. It was no different from the night skies over Spirit Mountain.
Sleep still wouldn't come.
He bounced back up. Rifling through his bundle, he pulled out the book Captain Woo had packed. Even walking nonstop, it would take at least two months to reach the Celestial Academy.
'I could hurry and make it faster.'
The book was too thin for idle reading; he'd finish and memorize it by tonight. Feeling a twinge of regret, Wi Seongcheon opened it.
The first page was about the Celestial Academy.
For hundreds of years, the Demonic Cult had nearly destroyed the murim world—not, the entire world—time and again.
The Demon King.
The 'gods' worshipped by the Demonic Cult.
The first Demon King to descend hundreds of years ago had crossed the sea. That divine calamity blackened the oceans and skies as it landed in the Western Regions, scheming new destruction and conquest alongside the countless demonic beasts it brought.
Masters gathered from all corners. They knew not that the world beyond the sea had vanished, but they knew that abominable, vicious existence could not be left alone. In the face of true evil, the divide between righteousness and evil held no value.
Whether out of righteous zeal to eradicate the demon or desperate struggle to survive. The murim united for the first time, fought back, and countless lives were lost. Cities crumbled, vegetation was dyed red then blackened and died. It was then that beings descended from the heavens: the Heavenly Persons.
Thus began the God-Demon War in earnest.
In the end, the Heavenly Person perished together with the Demon King. Both died, leaving behind their legacies.
Those enthralled by the Demon King's savage, destructive power slipped into the Western Regions and Xinjiang where the Demon King first arrived, founding the Demonic Cult.
The Heavenly Person warned the survivors. The demon had not been fully eradicated. Someday, this root of evil would bring a cataclysmic end times.
To counter that end times, the Celestial Academy was established.
For hundreds of years after, no Demon King descended. The Demon King's followers built the Demonic Cult and schemed for the end times over centuries, but the world remained at peace.
Naturally,
Righteousness and evil split once more. The righteous formed the Murim Alliance, the evil the Dark Black Union. The Celestial Academy trained the righteous factions' prodigies to prepare for the eventual end times, while the Dark Black Union established the Black Forest to train their own.
'An old tale.'
Even children with no ties to the murim knew it. The God-Demon War of hundreds of years ago was that famous. Nowadays, many doubted the Demon King's very existence.
The destruction of the world on the other side was true, but how could one being destroy such a vast realm? Wouldn't it make more sense if that world's end came from horrific natural disasters, not a Demon King?
The Demon King was no divine being. He was a 'human' who exploited calamities from beyond the sea to gather followers and build power. Even so, the Demon King of hundreds of years ago must have been a terrifyingly powerful master.
It didn't matter. How could anyone verify events from centuries past? Whatever the truth then, the Demonic Cult existed now.
Its leader, the Heavenly Demon, existed too. Over the hundreds of years since the Demonic Cult's founding, there had been nine Heavenly Demons, each a monstrous figure who could claim the title of supreme under heaven.
The Demonic Cult had never summoned a Demon King, but Heavenly Demons had tried to usher in the end times themselves countless times in murim history.
'Which number is this Heavenly Person?'
Compared to the awe inspired by the name Heavenly Demon, the Heavenly Persons' renown had faded.
'The seventh.'
Hundreds of years ago, the Heavenly Person who descended from the heavens perished with the Heavenly Demon, ending the God-Demon War.
But subsequent Heavenly Persons were not born from the heavens; they came from human wombs. That didn't mean later generations were inferior.
They were all once-in-a-millennium geniuses. They grew as the Demon King's adversaries, yet their greatest feat was mutual destruction with a Heavenly Demon—no more.
Every Heavenly Person proclaimed they would utterly destroy the Demonic Cult, but it endured. Over centuries, the Demonic Cult had become the murim's strongest force, even excluding the Heavenly Demon.
Especially under its current master.
Heavenly Demon Hyeok Wolun.
The one who slew the previous Heavenly Demon and even the prior Heavenly Person. Deemed the greatest Heavenly Demon in history, invariably mentioned when naming the supreme of past and present.
Fifty years ago.
After killing the previous Heavenly Demon and taking his throne, Hyeok Wolun suddenly sent a challenge to the sixth Heavenly Person, the Divine Sword Ji Munhyeok.
"If you defeat me, every Demonic Cult follower will end their own lives."
No one believed it, naturally. But the condition that Ji Munhyeok could choose the time and place swayed him.
Ji Munhyeok, one of the Ten Heroes at the time, drew Hyeok Wolun out with the Murim Alliance's backing.
Called both Heavenly Person and Divine Sword, Ji Munhyeok was the top of the Ten Heroes, with all proclaiming him supreme under heaven.
He had heard Hyeok Wolun killed the previous Heavenly Demon to become one, but Ji Munhyeok never considered defeat.
He was convinced he surpassed the already-dead former Heavenly Demon.
Even if—by some chance—he lost, it wouldn't matter. That's why he accepted the Murim Alliance's support. If defeat loomed, alliance masters would intervene, swarming Hyeok Wolun in a joint assault to bring him down.
Cowardly? There was no time for such thoughts. The Demonic Cult, the Heavenly Demon—they were absolute evil.
Capturing him would unveil the Demonic Cult's and Demon King's secrets. It was regrettable he couldn't draw in the other Ten Heroes, but he figured their help wasn't needed.
His only worry was whether Hyeok Wolun would even show at the designated place.
The day of the duel.
Hyeok Wolun came alone. Everyone thought he'd bring Demonic Cult fiends, but he was by himself.
Merely fifty years ago.
A humiliation etched as the greatest in righteous murim history. Ji Munhyeok couldn't withstand ten exchanges from Hyeok Wolun.
When defeat seemed certain and masters rushed in, Ji Munhyeok's head was crushed before they could aid him.
Having felled Ji Munhyeok, Hyeok Wolun slipped through the Murim Alliance's iron net and returned to the Demonic Cult leisurely.
'...Now the seventh.'
Heavenly Person Mu Yeonjun.
Born twenty years ago, the seventh Heavenly Person, currently at the Celestial Academy.